The following day his mother bought a “Lotto Tree” of unscratched instant win tickets from her Church’s charity auction. Sal was then left absolutely stunned when he found out his mother had won a million.

Realizing that the odds of his mother winning were so farfetched, Sal has now become a firm believer.

Though from this side of the Atlantic being a $ millionaire looks a little less attractive than being a £ millionaire! It really is not that much money these days – the average house price in Greater London is $670,000.

Seriously? You would seriously consider believing that while myriads of people live in poverty and never catch a financial break, suffer from disease, sometimes due to lack of funds for treatment… That while thousands probably prayed to the same god to win the same lottery, some of whom were surely in more acute financial duress than you… YOU won a million dollars, hence Jesus?

There is nothing “dogmatic” or “irrational” about pointing out the glaring flaws in what passes for thinking with that person. Sure, from his perspective it’s understandable, he’s obviously very emotional due to winning the lottery, etc.. But the one thing he’s not is rational. He is, however, extremely self-centered.

Im happy you said you “think” , because it implies you haven’t concluded yet. Without detailing it here, I can assure you that if gone is savvy to statistics, one will not need dogmatic for not doubting thier atheism. Your comment ilicited the same initial reaction I get when a Christian says to me “you’re only an atheist because you don’t want to be accountable for your behavior”. I.e., an immediate recognition that they haven’t really learned enough to even begin to engage in a nd intelligent conversation about this”, but that’s the feeling I get after said ignorance is stated as fact, so like I said, I am happy you did not conclude that position. Again, statistics proves the opposite of what many are thinking it does in this story, but you have to understand stats first.

Schwartz is a pious man, who’s always followed the commandments. He’s a proper shomer Shabbos.

Every week, old Schwartz prays “Dear Lord, let me win the lottery.”

So it goes – week after week, year after year.

Finally one day, Schwartz is fed up: “Lord! I have observed all your mitzvot. I have been a pious man. I have done good by my neighbour. – For years I have asked only one thing: ‘Let me win the lottery’, but even this little have you not seen fit to grant me.”

Then a voice booms from high: “Meet me halfway here, Schwartz. At least buy a meshuggeneh ticket for once!”

Nah. That wouldn’t be proof of Jesus — it’d be proof of Cthulu fucking with your head.

Jesus would take a pneumatic staple gun to PZ’s hands and feet, impale him with some track and field equipment, let him ripen for a few days, and then reanimate his fetid corpse. You’d be convinced when, instead of trying to eat your delicious braaaaaaaainz, Zombie PZ tried to get you to fondle his intestines. And then insisted that you eat his flesh and drink his blood so that you could join him in the joys of zombihood.

That’s WJWD. Says right there in the Wholly Babble.

If any god decides to answer your prayer, I sure hope it’s anyone but Jesus. Even Cthulu I could handle. but Jesus? Hell no!

Somewhere online, I read somebody’s view of a situation sorta like this; a person who had been an atheist found Jaysus and made a big deal of it. The writer (I think it was PZ talking about Kirk Cameron) summed up the conversion, saying the guy had been an atheist for no good reason, and then had become a christian for no good reason.
If the convertee had never put any thought into his worldview, then what is the point of using him as an example of anything?

When I first read the headline (posted elsewhere), I assumed that the “atheist” had converted _from_ Christianity. That would seem to make more sense. Excessive worldly riches seem incompatible with Jesus’ values. So a supposed prayer to Jesus that successfully (yes, only coincidentally, but it’s “real” for believers) results in riches would seem to invalidate Jesus’ own priorities. That contradiction could make someone become an unbeliever.

I just wanted to point out that, in fact, God did not actually give his mother a million dollars – yes, she won that much money, but something like half of it goes right back to the state in taxes (funny how that works, since most lotteries are state sponsored :)) so she’ll only see something on the order of $500,000, not $1,000,000. If God were actually answering that specific prayer and it was not random chance, she would have won something more like two million dollars.

So really, one cannot say that the prayer was successful – at best, it only half worked.

I won the instant lottery three times in a row once. $20 was the biggest ticket though. Which is why I remain an agnostic to this day. We’ve already established what Mr. Bentivegna is. We’re just haggling over the price. (Yes this comment makes no sense at all but it sounds like it should be funny so the hell with it.)

Lest there be anyone sillently thinking this is an amazing coincidence, or not know how to articulate why it is not amazing at all, I will explain it here why it is not amazing (if it even happened):

Just as I could articulate phenomenal odds of any set of daily mundane characteristics occuring at one time after the fact, it does not make it any more amazing that this son asked for this specific amount of cash that she won BEFORE it happened. While interesting, it is not amazing any more than most mildly amusing coincidences. This is because with the sheer number of lottery winners, say from over $100,000, it would not be surprising to note how many actually prayed or performed any superstitious act specifically to win the lottery.

The reason this is merely interesting and not amazing is because we only have a ‘one time’ attempt (he did not pray any other time his mother played the lottery) and he asked for a specific amount (1 million dollars).

So at most it’s ‘interesting’ because at some point it was almost bound to happen that someone would perform a one-time superstitious act and name a specific amount that is subsequently won. So dude might have converted for a reason as sound as because the tides go in, the tides go out.

And it gets FAR less interesting if dude didn’t really mention specifically $1,000,000. But we’ll just take his word for it, right?

Or that the extent of his reasoning for being an atheist was more than ‘it just doesn’t make sense’. That’s testable, if he is willing to discuss how this event trumped his reasons for knowing why the epistemology for belief in anything supernatural is profoundly flawed. But if he really understood the reasons not to believe, then…

…It could be the case that the tremendous euphoria of winning life changing amounts of money will eventually wear off and he’ll realize it doesn’t make him ‘believe’ any more than before. Which means….

… he may have set him self up for some grief as euphoria often makes us do and say some pretty stupid things. He may have boldly and emotionally announced how he was wrong, how he doesn’t understand it, etc. and that will make it even harder to ‘break it’ to his theistic friends/family, etc. Add ‘tears of joy’ and it’s even more embarrassing to the point it might be a life long secret that he realized he still doesn’t believe.

I tell you the truth, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. Matthew 19:23-24

Sal, if Jesus had a hand in this it is because he hates you and your mother and wants to send you both to hell.

“I tell you the truth, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. Matthew 19:23-24”

So… Religious teacher tells person with disposable income to dispose of it? I don’t suppose there was a collection plate anywhere about the place.

If true, I don’t hugely fault the guy… The odds of such a thing happening have got to be pretty far against, and plenty of people have believed false things as a result of incredibly unlikely (but ultimately spurious) data.

Put it another way: If the only people who believed in God were the ones who won the lottery one day after first praying to win the lottery, I’d be more than comfortable with the amount of religion in the world.

There was a newspaper article about a lady down the road who has won three big lotteries. There was no mention of prayer in the article. I understand there are several people who have won multiple big lotteries. I wonder if there is any correlation between their religious practices and their success.

No matter how sarcastic Sal was being earlier, it’s like he is pretending that asking Voldemort if he is real will actually get an answer. Sorry, but I think the newly converted, fresh-from-the-bank groveler at Radioactive Zombie Jesus’s mutant feet is either an idiot or taking his joke on his mother to a careless extreme. After all, the sheer number of people who have said that exact same thing and not won the lottery clearly refudiates the existence of God😉

There is the joke (which actually has a deep philosophical meaning) about the chap who kept asking God to let him win the lottery. Weeks went by, he kept praying, but nothing happened. Finally a voice boomed down from the heavens: “You have to at least by a ticket!”